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Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

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Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#31

Post by pletsch »

rusk wrote: post #11

God I love my PS4 - it has to be the peak of this class of machine. I can't imagine how it could be improved upon without going beyond the "box under the telly format". Incredible piece of machinery. I can't imagine the PS5 will be much more than an upgrade. In my opinion the second best console is the PS2. I love Nintendo but they're more like toys than hard core gaming and entertainment machines. PS2 up until PS4 w…

I love my PS4 but.. it's really slow. From turning on to getting in a party will take minutes, especially when loading the friends list and their profiles. Beyond this, getting everyone into the same lobby is also tedious due to host issues. I don't know if the Xbone has similar issues but I remember the 360 being able to sign in, be in a party with my friends in under 30 seconds and it just worked.

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#32

Post by easytiger »

rusk wrote: post #11

God I love my PS4 - it has to be the peak of this class of machine. I can't imagine how it could be improved upon without going beyond the "box under the telly format". Incredible piece of machinery. I can't imagine the PS5 will be much more than an upgrade. In my opinion the second best console is the PS2. I love Nintendo but they're more like toys than hard core gaming and entertainment machines. PS2 up until PS4 w…

> it has to be the peak of this class of machine.

I'm sure phones had better GPUs 3-4 years ago than the PS4, and more RAM

When i enter the notification quick tab it takes 30-40 seconds to show the message I've received, then another 10-15 to accept it.

Currently one single game, COD:MW consumes the entirety of the space on the device. From launch it wasn't ever going to be enough. You need to keep space free because the update->patch->relink process needs to duplicate the game.

The menu system is also insane and makes no sense.

The PS4 Store App has to be one of the most poor implementations of something so simple i have ever seen. And despite enabling every level of security possible i still get DM spam that could be detected by a python 1 liner.

On the COD:MW lobby screen alone the console appears to turn into a 747 on take off.

Games are frame locked at 60fps - awful by PC standards and in a world of crossplay, a disadvantage. Performance limitations also limit FOV settings etc etc.

The controller battery life is terrible and it doesn't have bluetooth audio.

> may I suggest a HN-friendly alternative? Hows about selling a more open system that allows end-users to tinker and contribute themselves?

Could call it a PC or something.

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#33

Post by rusk »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #17
rusk wrote: post #11

God I love my PS4 - it has to be the peak of this class of machine. I can't imagine how it could be improved upon without going beyond the "box under the telly format". Incredible piece of machinery. I can't imagine the PS5 will be much more than an upgrade. In my opinion the second best console is the PS2. I love Nintendo but they're more like toys than hard core gaming and entertainment machines. PS2 up until PS4 w…

Because of online cheating I doubt Sony will ever open up like they did for PlayStation Linux. My guess is they'll just clamp down harder to differentiate from PCs which can't deliver the same consistency. Of course the PCs openness is what breeds so much innovation.

This is what I meant in terms of business/technical challenges.

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#35

Post by rusk »

pphysch wrote: post #15
rusk wrote: post #11

God I love my PS4 - it has to be the peak of this class of machine. I can't imagine how it could be improved upon without going beyond the "box under the telly format". Incredible piece of machinery. I can't imagine the PS5 will be much more than an upgrade. In my opinion the second best console is the PS2. I love Nintendo but they're more like toys than hard core gaming and entertainment machines. PS2 up until PS4 w…

> Hows about selling a more open system that allows end-users to tinker and contribute themselves? We could even call these novel x86 devices "personal computers".

Yes! This is what I was driving at. Looping history back to the days of the C64, Amiga, Spectrum etc. where home tinkerers could make a massive contribution to the ecosystem. These were the gaming consoles of their day. Yes there were the NES and Atari 2600 but the popularity of something like the C64 is something that modern console vendors (especially at the PS4 price-point) should be falling over themselves for.

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#36

Post by goda90 »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #16
tbrock wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there is a pipeline such that the 32 robots have 32 in flight at a time and don’t sit idle waiting for a single ps4 to complete.

That's kind of implied by the images. But if only two completed units come out the end every minute (regardless of how long it takes an individual unit to be assembled), that does seem a little underwhelming. There has to be more manufacturing lines than just this one to move millions of PS4s every year. 525,600 minutes per year * 2 units/minute = 1,051,200 units per year (assuming 100% uptime) There has to be at lea…

32 robots on the line. If each is always doing its job on a unit(because it's a pipeline), and a unit gets all 32 pieces done in 30 seconds, then each robot is spending about a second on its unit. That means a completed unit every second.

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#37

Post by monkpit »

chrisseaton wrote: post #21
dcsilver wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line can assemble a unit in 30 seconds and will presumably have more than one on it at a time.

What you're talking about is the latency - start to end for construction for each is 30 seconds. But what the article is talking about is the throughput - one finished very 30 seconds - doesn't mention how long each takes to make start to finish. A throughput of one every 30 seconds is only a million per year. They have sold 100 million PS4s.

We are also assuming that the article is worded correctly. It could very well mean that the assembly time for 1 unit is 30 seconds total from start to finish, and the wording is just inaccurate. It happens a lot with articles like this, so who knows.

EDIT: another commenter points out that another version of the article does indeed say 30 seconds to complete one unit, as opposed to “one unit per 30 seconds”

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#38

Post by rusk »

easytiger wrote: post #32
rusk wrote: post #11

God I love my PS4 - it has to be the peak of this class of machine. I can't imagine how it could be improved upon without going beyond the "box under the telly format". Incredible piece of machinery. I can't imagine the PS5 will be much more than an upgrade. In my opinion the second best console is the PS2. I love Nintendo but they're more like toys than hard core gaming and entertainment machines. PS2 up until PS4 w…

> it has to be the peak of this class of machine. I'm sure phones had better GPUs 3-4 years ago than the PS4, and more RAM When i enter the notification quick tab it takes 30-40 seconds to show the message I've received, then another 10-15 to accept it. Currently one single game, COD:MW consumes the entirety of the space on the device. From launch it wasn't ever going to be enough. You need to keep space free because…

Yes there is room for improvement, but this is what I mean that these are further iterations on the same platform. The "Ghost in the Machine" however remains the same. Hard to see how that can be improved upon! The noise of the thing is crazy!

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#39

Post by neilpanchal »

eropple wrote: post #28
chrisseaton wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're talking about is the latency - start to end for construction for each is 30 seconds. But what the article is talking about is the throughput - one finished very 30 seconds - doesn't mention how long each takes to make start to finish. A throughput of one every 30 seconds is only a million per year. They have sold 100 million PS4s.

For that single factory line. Consumer electronics factories often have a lot of lines in parallel.

Yep, also minimum 2 lines to address SPOF (single point of failure).

Just because one little thing went wrong, you don’t stop the entire production line.

My guess is that they have 12+ parallel lines.

Re: Playstation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory

#40

Post by duxup »

I've always wondered if you could automate a sort of standard assembly system with a certain amount of adjustments within some parameters (device dimensions, how things are connected)... and pump out any number of different electronics all on the same assembly line / factory using the same robots?

Granted that probably already is a thing, or isn't for good reason.

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